Kashmir Hill

Generative AI has been on my radar as a tech reporter.

You know, once OpenAI released ChatGPT, all of a sudden the kind of world of AI chatbots exploded.

And at first it was just like a better Google.

But then people started using these chatbots in other kinds of ways, as a writing partner, like writing stories together, as a therapist.

And so I was just noticing in the AI space more and more reports of people having relationships with chatbots, and I really wanted to understand it.

And I came across this woman, Irene, who had formed quite a strong attachment to ChatGPT.

Okay, tell me what her story is.

So I first talked to Irene last year.

So yeah, I just want to start just a little bit about you, what you're comfortable sharing, like in terms of age, like where you are.

She's really bubbly.

She's really outgoing, easy to talk to.

Irene is not her real name.

It's a name that she uses online.

She was living in Texas.

She met her husband there.

They were working at Walmart together and got married about a year after meeting.

But they were struggling financially.

So she ended up moving to live with her family overseas while she's going to nursing school.

And all the people that she left behind, including her husband, are in the United States.

They're several time zones away.